In a variety of environments, seismic surveys are performed to gain a better understanding of subterranean geological formations. In marine environments, for example, seismic surveys are conducted to improve the understanding of geological formations located beneath a body of water. In seismic survey applications, seismic sources are employed to create pulses of energy, and data on the energy from the seismic sources is recorded. The recorded information is used to improve the quality of the seismic survey by, for example, optimizing signal resolution.
When employing simultaneous source methods of seismic acquisition, various techniques are employed to establish source firing offsets, often called source sequences. These offsets in time may then be used to find, resolve, and/or separate any of the simultaneous sources from other coherent and incoherent noise sources in the seismic records. The offsets may either be systematic or pseudo-random. Both approaches are actually deterministic in that the methodology is designed with respect to the systematic approach and constrained with respect to the pseudo-random approach. The approaches are employed to optimize methods of signal resolution; however errors or inaccuracies may result from the systematic and/or pseudo-random approaches.